World Series of Poker

Will the main event beat last year's US$87,730,000 prize pool?

by Andrew W Scott

It’s that time of year again - World Series of Poker time. Since Australia’s own Joe Hachem won the US$7,500,000 first prize of the 2005 WSOP main event, interest in the WSOP from the Australian poker fraternity has been huge.

The first ever WSOP main event for which a cash prize was paid was played in 1971, between a mere six people, in a smoke filled room at the spiritual home of World Poker - the Horseshoe Casino in Downtown Las Vegas. It was won by Johny Moss, defeating Puggy Pearson, pocketing the winnerr-takes-all US$30,000 prize in the process, serious money in the early 1970's.

But neither Moss nor Pearson could possibly have imagined what the future would hold. The table below shows in the incredible explosion that poker would experience over the next 35 years. Last year the main event took an incredible 8,773 entrants, each coughing up the US$10,000 entry fee the event has had since 1972 (in 1971 the entry fee was “only” US$5,000). That’s a total prize pool of US$87,730,000! It is now played in an enormous hall with a 3,000 player capacity at the Rio casino in Las Vegas. It took eight days for the 2006 champion, Jamie Gold, to overcome his 8,772 opponents in the main event, and claim the US$12,000,000 first prize. The main event is of course no-limit Texas Hold’em Poker, the granddaddy of all poker variants.

The WSOP is now so huge that it takes over a month just to conduct the schedule of 54 lead-up events, before even starting the main event. Although this year’s WSOP started last Saturday, it will not be until 6 July before the main event kicks-off. This year “the big one” will be a 12 day marathon, slated to finally end on 17 July (well, if previous years are a guide, it will really be more like 4am the next morning).

There has been much speculation about how many entrants there will be in this year’s main event, with some bookmakers even taking bets on it. While poker is exploding world-wide, it has hit a serious snag with George W Bush signing the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act last year. Thousands of last year’s entries won their seats in the main event by winning satellite tournaments at Internet Poker sites. It is unclear how the WSOP will deal with such satellite winners this year. Some pundits are predicting as few as 3,500 entrants, with others as many as 15,000. A well known poker website is running a “nearest the pin” competition on guessing the number of entrants. So far it has taken 334 guesses, with the average guess being 12,992. Most experts are predicting fewer than last year’s 8,773 entrants, but last Saturday’s lead-up event shocked them. It had a field of an astounding 2,998 entries - the highest ever for a non-main event poker tournament in the world. In fact, it was the third biggest poker tournament in all time history, after the 2005 and 2006 main events. The Rio casino can “only” cope with 3,000 entrants at a time, and has scheduled three rounds of day one, implying that they expect no more than 9,000 will enter the main event.

Watch this space.

© 2007 Andrew W Scott